third attempt
Confession: I think this is one of the most difficult challenges to teach. It is more easily shown. Understood by a model. Paul said, watch me and do as I do (1 Cor 11:1 Do as I do, for I am doing as Christ did.). Show them. Show them.
There was no need for a lecture or series in the upper room to teach the disciples on how to be immersed in the Spirit. How to walk in the Spirit. How to be baptized into the Spirit. How to be empowered by the Spirit.
They simply lived it. They were involved in what the Holy Spirit accomplished in one fateful day where 3,000 are added and baptized to the church.
I’m sure after that first powerful outpour, the fire resting on them and the clear gospel proclamation of Peter they knew ministry done in the Spirit’s might was effective. He is the only way. Are you making space, room for him to move?
Why would they do it any other way? Later in Acts 4 a threat to God’s people and a combat war on their courage challenged the church.
They did it again, they prayed. They believed in the Son of God who told them to pray. They understood first hand what the Spirit of God brought to the petitioner.
I exhort you most of the knowledge I now understand about how the Spirit operates came from experience in the kitchen of someone else’s church, the do as I do from someone else’s life.
Learning happened when I was a member among the many. There I was unknown by the group gathered. I gave myself to the watching, the learning, the leaning in when God’s Spirit would move on men and women. I not only saw the difference, I felt the difference.
I encountered the Spirit. And when I did everything shifted. I found the more of God. He is boundless, eternal, enough.
Look for men and women around you who have encountered the Holy Spirit. They are the ones who live hungry. In the sermon on the mount Jesus identifies the blessed as those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. The residue and empowerment from God on their lives is still there. They were filled, are filled and will be filled like a cup under an endless faucet. There is always more.
We are more than Elisha’s bones to a dead man (2 King 13:21) we are living witnesses of the Holy Spirit giving life with the laying on of hands.
This is my third attempt to explain what can happen when you reach for the more of God. I wrestle with giving you an experience because you will either identify with it or not. Or perhaps make a formula out of experience when God rarely repeats a well written story. He is always writing something new, same Spirit, new generation. So it here it is simply. Go after the more of God. Pursue connection, communion, and close proximity.
And here is the complexity. It may be a life long, pursuit. In this pursuit we are apprehending and being apprehended by the Spirit of God. Phil. 3:12 Not that already I have obtained it or already have been perfected, but I am pursuing, if also I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
